IP cameras

Hikvision meets most of your features and price criteria, and it is possible to set up much of it under firefox, but sadly windows is needed for the ActiveX parts that defined image detection regions and similar.

I have not yet found an IP camera in the domestic range that does not need Windows and I did ask on a WebCam forum...

camera I have been struggling with since day 1 is now missing events too ma ny times...

needs must I can resurrect an old windows xp laptop and hope that I can ma nage (before it gets choked with trojans, malware, incessant upgrade demand s).

I've run one from a Mac for years using eveocam software, but I guess that' s not much use to the OP. There are petcams and babycams where you can sen d a message if movement or sound is detected. I'm not sure iof the hero-sports cams can email or not.

I run a Raspberry Pi in a camera housing with its Camera module, and the 'motion' software. Very high quality images, and so far, very reliable.

Can view it live, and it captures motion events to jpegs and avis.

Virtual box and XP black edition?

/I run a Raspberry Pi in a camera housing with its Camera module, and the 'motion' software. Very high quality images, and so far, very reliable.

Can view it live, and it captures motion events to jpegs and avis. /q

Interesting.

I've studied those and I'm tempted, but stories of instability of the PI especially in longterm 'always on' applications put me off a bit....

How often does yours fallover? And how much are we talking all in?

Cheers Jim K

Virtual box and XP black edition? /q

Is there a recommended source for a safe XP black download or are they all a bit iffy?

I'd like to give it a go on my Linux box - at least to try & manage my other IP cameras, that like Tim's, are all 'hooked' on active x for key feature setup...

Anyone up for some handholding?

Cheers Jim K

Someone gave me a DVD which worked like clockwork.

I am loathe to post it online tho, despite having at least 3 redundant XP licenses from second hand hardware..upgraded to Linux...

So do I but indoors so the Pi is just ina case and the camera taped to a window. Well it works... B-) One day

Mines thrown a serious wobbly twice in 6+ months. Serious as in the first time the SD Card became read only, I . Second was similar but I could reuse the card, just reinstalled the OS/config/scripts etc.

Well both of mine seem pretty reliable, the camera and the one running OSMC/Kodi media player.

Oddly both are on 19 days uptime and within an hour or two of each other. I don't remember fiddling with 'em.

TBH very similar, if not more, than the cheap "weather proof" IP cameras but with added time and effort to install/configur/develop the software, fit into exteranl housing etc

I'm also in the market for reasonably priced IP cameras but they must be able to FTP a still image every n minutes not just on movement.

My Android phone has a neat app for camera viewing via the internet, I wonder if there is one for Linux. I can select which camera view, out of

I have three cameras feeding an old desktop PC loaded with Ubuntu 8.04 and Zoneminder. Recording is triggered by motion, in zones set up by me, and I believe that it can be configured to send e-mail messages. One of the cameras is indoor WiFi (IP camera), routed through my network router, and cost about £65 last year. It has more features than I will ever need.

Maybe this would help? Zoneminder is of course free, but a donation is suggested if it works for you. I found camsecure very helpful.

I have a RPi with webcam which hasn't needed attention since last October. They are more stable and reliable than any desktop or laptop.

/I have a RPi with webcam which hasn't needed attention since last October. They are more stable and reliable than any desktop or laptop. /q

Alas that's not a universal experience...

Jim K

In message , JimK writes

Amen to that.

I've got a Pi with a Pi camera on that worked fine for over a year (albeit on light usage), suddenly stopped working. Tried putting my spare Pi Cam in, and that doesn't work either. Do I have a dodgy Pi ?

This has been raised on the Pi Forum and comp.sys.raspberry-pi with no conclusive result.

Adrian

They don't like power glitches. Probably down to having a live file system containing the OS, etc. Most other webcams, routers, APs, modems have their firmware/config in some form of EPROM that doesn't get corupted by a power glitch and doesn't object to just being switched off and not shutdown.

My Pi based webcam is pretty reliable since I moved the rolling 2000 odd still images per day used to make the timelapse movies from the SD card to a USB stick. I have a feeling that I killed an 8 GB micro SD card in about 6 weeks just from the number of files created/deleted. "Killed" as in going into the "self defence, read only" mode.

It falls over when the power goes off. But then, I lose the NAS as well, so ...

It's never crashed or stopped working. I wrote scripts to kick the motion daemon back up if it fails. And be sure to run with ramlog to avoid writing to the SD card. So there's no write output to the SD card that I can notice at all. Stops the SD breaking. Images and videos are placed on my NAS.

It wouldn't be too hard to make a raspberry pi UPS with a rechargeable battery, and GPIO signalling. Been considering this, actually. For filesystem protection as you say, if nothing else.

Why bother making when you can buy:

I think there are a couple of other designs out there as well.

I suppose at the simplist a battery pack > series diode to Pi power in, PSU > series diode to Pi power in and PSU > series diode to a pulled down GPIO pin. Monitor the GPIO pin when it goes low inititate shutdown.

Why bother? In a d-i-y group?